rough a vast extent of country.

When Athanaric, the chief magistrate of the Thuringians, had become
informed of those unexpected occurrences, he prepared to maintain his
ground, with a resolution to rise up in strength should he be assailed
as the others had been.

At last he pitched his camp at a distance in a very favorable spot near
the banks of the Dniester and the valleys of the Gruthungi, and sent
Muderic, who afterward became duke of the Arabian frontier, with
Lagarimanus and others of the nobles, with orders to advance for twenty
miles, to reconnoitre the approach of the enemy; while in the mean time
he himself, without delay, marshalled his troops in line of battle.

However, things turned out in a manner very contrary to his
expectations. For the Huns--being very sagacious in
conjectures--suspecting that there must be a considerable
multitude farther off, contrived to pass beyond those they had
seen, and arranged themselves to take their rest where there was
nothing at hand to disturb them; and then, when the moon
dispelled the darkness of night, they forded the river, which was
the best plan which presented itself, and fearing lest the
pickets at the outposts might give the alarm to the distant camp,
they made all possible speed and advanced with the hope of
surprising Athanaric himself.

He was stupefied at the suddenness of their onset, and, after losing
many of his men, was compelled to flee for refuge to the precipitous
mountains in the neighborhood, where, being wholly bewildered with the
strangeness of this occurrence, and the fear of greater evils to come,
he began to fortify with lofty walls all the territory between the banks
of the River Pruth and the Danube, where it passes through the land of
the Taifali; and he completed this line of fortification with great
diligence, thinking that by this step he should secure his own personal
safety.

While this important work was going on, the Huns kept pressing on his
traces with great speed, and they would have overtaken and destroyed him
if they had not been forced to abandon the pursuit from being impeded by
the great quantity of their booty. In the mean time a report spread
extensively through the other nations of the Goths, that a race of men,
hitherto unknown, had suddenly descended like a whirlwind from the lofty
mountains, as if they had risen from some secret recess of the earth,
and were ravaging and destroying everything which came in their